So how was your day, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan? We're guessing it didn't go quite the way you intended. For example, several million fewer people on this planet didn't associate your name, if they knew it at all, with the word "dictator."

But that was the top worldwide trending hashtag for many long primetime hours on Twitter Thursday — #DictatorErdoğan. Suddenly, millions of non-Turks who didn't know your name went running to their Wikipedias to find out this latest globally-acknowledged bad guy was. Who was joining the elite club of North Korea, Iran, Syria and the other global pariahs who've tried blocking Twitter?

And maybe you would have liked that kind of notoriety — maybe it is, in fact, why you blocked Twitter in the first place.

Indeed, you immediately and rather gleefully anticipated a response from the "international community" at a rally Thursday, thus setting yourself up as a Turkish hero taking on the world, or some woefully unoriginal nationalistic nonsense, and distracting attention from the tales of your government's corruption leaking in through Twitter. You get to look the big man by saying "Twitter, Schmitter," right?

Only trouble is, Twitter gave you a black eye. Spray-painted on your election posters across Turkey are mysterious and revolutionary sets of numbers. You're probably not tech-savvy enough to know what they are, but they're numbers for DNS servers. Everyone in your country is but two clicks on "Settings" away from flouting your ridiculous Twitter ban.

I say "probably not tech-savvy enough" not as an ad-hominem attack, but a fair assessment of your level of game. You "poisoned the wells" of local DNS servers, but did nothing to hold back the tide of international servers. Even those not savvy enough to check their settings could connect to Twitter simply by going to Tor first.

But even that wouldn't stop your countryman shouting about what a buffoon of a leader you are, not unless you started blocking the cellular networks too. Because Twitter, in lieu of any kind of angry response to your actions, simply and immediately sent out a single tweet — the Internet equivalent of barely lifting a pinkie. And hey presto, anyone in the country with a phone could send news to everyone in every other country.

Turkish users: you can send Tweets using SMS. Avea and Vodafone text START to 2444. Turkcell text START to 2555.

Your ignorance no longer had meaning. Your impotence was showing. The #twitterblockedinturkey hashtag, watched by the world and trending for the whole day, was absolutely owned by Turkish tweets — 77% of them from the country that wasn't supposed to be able to use Twitter, by your order. Some 17,000 tweets every minute leaked out of your impregnable kingdom like it was a sieve.

Since the block on #Twitter, almost 2,5 million Turkish tweets have been posted. That's ~17000 tweets a min. via @zetegazete

So yes, why not let all leaders who think it's a good idea to block the free-flow of information come and have a go at blocking Twitter? In the highly unlikely event they have the wealth and intelligence to succeed, well, we've exposed one of the bad guys to the world's glare. But in the far more likely event that they fail — as Hosni Mubarak did in Egypt; remember what happened to him? — then their days are most likely numbered.

Erdoğan may yet win the municipal elections on March 30; he is the clear favorite, after all, and he has pretty much absolute control of the internal Turkish news media. But that's just one battle, and after today, it may not even be clear Erdoğan knows what game he's playing. The "dictator" hashtag may not apply here, for simple reasons of incompetence. Far better to be a plain-and-simple Prime Minister.

Memo to all who would censor: careful. In the early 21st century, social media, not your state-run networks, is king. And if you come at the king, you best not miss.

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is a leading source for news, information and resources for the Connected Generation. Mashable reports on the importance of digital innovation and how it empowers and inspires people around the world. Mashable's record 42 million unique visitors worldwide and 21 million social media followers are one of the most influential and engaged online communities. Founded in 2005, Mashable is headquartered in New York City with an office in San Francisco.